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U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#131

Post by kingcharles »

elliekelly wrote: post #108
walrus01 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm suspicious of any messaging system that has ties into rich media / embedded-in-chat content. I even wish I could disable URL previews, gifs, and inline images in Signal.

I didn't know it was possible to disable URL previews in iMessage[1] until I read this comment. Does toggling this setting only prevent the preview from displaying or does it prevent the fetch altogether? I wish there were a way to white list the URL previews for certain contacts rather than turning it off all or nothing. [1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7677834

It can be your "trusted" contacts that infect you though.

"Jeff Bezos was hacked by a file sent from the WhatsApp account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos_phone_hacking

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#132

Post by boomskats »

jjclint wrote: post #102
SavantIdiot wrote: post #52

The Israel government gets a pass for anything they do. Whether it is lying about nukes or what they've done to Palestine. NSO is a feather in their cap.

Sounds like you and some other "clever" souls have an axe to grind with Israel.

> "clever"

This is offensive. They outlined how they disagree with the Israeli government pretty clearly in their comment.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#135

Post by bell-cot »

maltalex wrote: post #46

I don't understand the focus on NSO in these stories. If U.S State Department personnel in Uganda were shot from an M-16, would the headline mention "an American arms manufacturer"? No, because it's ridiculous. For better or worse, NSO's product is a weapon. How is it any different from an M-16? Where is the outrage towards the people who used this weapon against the State Department?

In National Security contexts, the "get angry at the weapon seller" response is very strongly correlated with how advanced (in technology, power, and scarcity) the weapon is perceived to be.

For an "average soldier" weapon, such as an M-16 - $Company isn't likely to catch much grief - unless they're selling a considerable quantity of them, or to an extremely notorious buyer. Similar for a cyberweapon - but an "everyday" one, which wouldn't be a big surprise for a C-list ransomware group to use.

Vs. NSO's stuff seems to be the sort of top-tech goodies which A-list nation states use to maintain & enjoy their A-list status. Whether any actual harm results from this incident... publicly letting a bunch of "the wrong sorts" into that exclusive clubhouse is getting NSO into really deep do-do with "the regulars".

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#136

Post by montblanc »

whimsicalism wrote: post #126
montblanc wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only if you count general American military spending Of course I do. Europe has no real army. France kinda has an army and the U.K got out. If America didn't provide a military umbrella Europe would need to actually build a real army (Europe's contributions to NATO are pitiful). How much would it cost the Europeans to do that? Going back since WW2 that's easily in the trillions.

Given that the US actively engages in military operations in defense of Israel, I would say that it not reasonable to attribute a larger share of the spending to Germany rather than Israel?

What military operations would those be?

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#137

Post by [deleted] »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #10

>In a public response, NSO has said its technology helps stop terrorism and that they've installed controls to curb spying against innocent targets. For example, NSO says its intrusion system cannot work on phones with U.S. numbers beginning with the country code +1. So the point is to stop terrorism and to do that they've immediately ruled that all Americans aren't terrorists. That doesn't seem like a good metric of…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#139

Post by prox »

smnrchrds wrote: post #39
s_dev wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I just have to buy a US phone to evade detection from NSO? And why didn't that logic work for US State Dept phones? I'm honestly of the opinion there is nothing that NSO can say that isn't outright lying. This isn't a normal company in anyway.

I remember reading that some Russian (private sector) computer viruses did not attack computers whose language and locale were set to Russia. It's never about ethics. It's always about making as much money as possible without pissing off powerful people and entities.

I had this with a Chinese app. Works well on a Chinese language phone, downloads an extra package if not.
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